Yearly Archives: 2017

Dear Readers of SciHi Blog, Since 2012 we are now publishing articles about people and events related to science, technology, history, and art. More than 2,100 articles are already posted, and it has become more and more difficult to find another important scientist, artist, or event related to the current day. Of course we could go on and find more, but with less famous people also research about their life besides the mere…

On December 30, 1552, classical scholar, translator, author, and Protestant apologist of Spanish origin Francisco de Enzinas, also known by the humanist name Francis Dryander, passed away. De Enzinas was the first to translate the New Testament from Greek to Spanish. Early Years Francisco de Enzinas was born in Burgos, Spain, probably on 1 November 1518, as one of ten children of the successful wool merchant Juan de Enzinas and his wife…

On December 29, 1816, German physician and physiologist Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig was born. Ludwig was one of the creators of modern physiology. He applied the experimental approach of chemistry and physics to explain the way the body functions. Ludwig investigated the structure of the kidneys and cardiac activity. Early Life Carl Ludwig was born in Witzenhausen an der Werra, near Kassel, Germany. His father was the rent master in Witzenhausen, later promoted…

On December 28, 1818, German chemist Carl Remigius Fresenius was born. Fresenius is known for his studies in analytical chemistry. He devised a method for systematic identification and separation of individual metal and non-metal ions, selecting the most suitable reactions from the many that were known. Early Years Carl Remigius Fresenius was the son of Jakob Samuel Heinrich Fresenius, a lawyer with a doctorate in law. After attending school at the Bender Institute…

On December 27, 1790, English obstetrician James Blundell was born. Blundell researched in the technique of blood transfusion, and was the first in Great Britain to perform the procedure using human blood (rather than animal blood) on 26 Sep 1818 at Guy‘s Hospital, London, where he used an apparatus of his his own design to collect and transfer the blood. Early Years James Blundell was born in London, UK, to Major Blundell,…

On December 26, 1861, German geophysicist Emil Johann Wiechert was born. Wiechert made many contributions to both fields, including presenting the first verifiable model of a layered structure of the Earth and being among the first to discover the electron. He invented the “inverted pendulum” seismograph, (an improvement still incorporated in today’s instruments), with which he was able to detect some of the Earth‘s inner structure. He suggested the Earth has an inner,…

On December 25, 1356, the final chapters of the Golden Bull were decreed by the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg and Metz headed by the Emperor Charles IV. The Golden Bull fixed, for a period of more than four hundred years, important aspects of the constitutional structure of the Holy Roman Empire. It mainly regulated the modalities of election and the coronation of the Roman-German kings and emperors by the electors until the…

On December 24, 1740, Finnish-Swedish astronomer, mathematician, and physicist Anders Johan Lexell was born. Lexell made important discoveries in polygonometry and celestial mechanics; the latter led to a comet named in his honour. La Grande Encyclopédie states that he was the prominent mathematician of his time who contributed to spherical trigonometry with new and interesting solutions, which he took as a basis for his research of comet and planet motion. His name…

On December 23, 1911, Danish immunologist Niels Kaj Jerne was born. Jerne shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984 with Georges J. F. Köhler and César Milstein “for theories concerning the specificity in development and control of the immune system and the discovery of the principle for production of monoclonal antibodies“. “An immune system of enormous complexity is present in all vertebrate animals. When we place a population of…

On December 22, 1799, Irish priest and physicist Nicholas Callan was born. Callan invented the induction coil (1836) before that of better-known Heinrich Ruhmkorff. Callan‘s coil was built using a horseshoe shaped iron bar wound with a secondary coil of thin insulated wire under a separate winding of thick insulated wire as the “primary” coil. Each time a battery‘s current through the “primary” coil was interrupted, a high voltage current was produced in…